The present invention relates to an imaging device and its driving method.
Heretofore, imaging devices such as CCD image sensors have widely been employed in image scanners, facsimiles, digital cameras and so forth. The imaging device is equipped with a shift register for serially transferring electric charge stored in a plurality of light receiving parts. Before signal charge is stored in the light receiving parts, a gate provided between the light receiving parts and the shift register is opened so that the electric charge is transferred in unison from the light receiving parts to the shift register as an unnecessary electric charge. Thereby, the image reading speed can be increased by efficiently discharging the unnecessary electric charge thus transferred to the shift register (see JP-A-2001-111892, for example).